Britain’s High Representative is letting Europe down badly
Agnès Poirier
London Times
January 28, 2010
As they say in Brussels, the Lady doesn’t cut la moutarde. In her first weeks as the EU Foreign Affairs Minister, Catherine Ashton has managed to make a hash of it. One diplomat even confided that she had “killed the job”.
Jean Quatremer, a French journalist and one of the keenest observers of the European Commission for 20 years, has been distilling details of Baroness Ashton of Upholland’s routine in Brussels. It would seem that the Labour peer spends more time on the Eurostar commuting home to London than in her office, where nobody answers the phone after 8pm.
Too bad when the caller is Hillary Clinton saying that she’s on her way to Haiti. Was Catherine en route? No. On Friday January 15, she had cancelled all appointments to go home earlier. José Manuel Barroso had to send Karel De Gucht, the Development Commissioner.
A few days later, Lady Ashton tried to defend herself. Her arguments fell decidedly flat: “I’m neither a doctor nor a fireman.” Indeed, but surely she must know that diplomacy at this level implies symbolic gestures and fast action. The EU has committed four times more in aid to Haiti than the US, so it would have been logical, if not crucial for Europe’s image that its Foreign Affairs Minister stood alongside the Secretary of State.
In the European Parliament, a French MEP harangued Lady Ashton: “You shouldn’t be here but in Haiti.” Michel Barnier, sharp as a tack, said: “In December 2004, when the tsunami struck and I was the French Foreign Affairs Minister, I left immediately for South-East Asia.”
Figures are not her thing either. Last Monday, at a press conference where she was supposed to give an update on European aid to Haiti, Lady Ashton had to be rescued by Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the Spanish Foreign Minister, whose brief was delivered in three languages.
Lady Ashton must be the only person in Brussels unable to speak more than one language fluently. But this shouldn’t have stopped her joining a UN seminar organised by Ban Ki Moon with Mrs Clinton present, or contacting the world’s heads of state on taking up her job on December 1. London may naively have thought that with Lady Ashton at the heart of Brussels, Britain would at last get some leverage; but with such poor leadership, the 27 European countries will resort to individual diplomacy. So much for speaking with one voice in the world.
Can somebody find the Lady a decent flat in Brussels — and a language teacher?
January 29th, 2010 at 4:56 am
I found your blog post while searching Google. Very relevant especially as this is not an issue which a lot of peaople know that well